Ostensible Cat

I have several hobbyist gaming projects in the works. My New Year’s Resolution of sorts was to focus. More specifically, bring focus to my OSR projects. Here’s a rundown of where I’m at with my projects and what I have in the works (and what I’d like to work on). Delve! – My reimagining of the classic board game Dungeon! I’ve got the classes and monster list down as well as spells and effects. Delve! Will use 2d10 instead of 2d6 but will play much like the original game with a few added rules; so not a direct clone but more a project in the spirit of the original. I intend on doing a full mockup of the board game to give to my son for his birthday. So that means the game will have to be completed or playable by 11 May 2011. I intend on publishing the rule set upon completion. Strange Magic! – Working title for now. This will be my rules supplement to Labyrinth Lord detailing ritual, summoning, pact, rune, divine/spiritual, and craft magics as well as supporting disciplines and...

Alrighty, I'm working up some maps for my latest dungeon and I was wondering, at what point does a dungeon go from being an encouter site to a megadungeon? I'm no expert certainly but I do have some thoughts. It seems to me that a megadungeon involves a fairly sizable locale that has an ecosystem that periodically replentishes itself. Also a megadungeon in the classic sense doesn't really need any reason to exist other than because it's there (mad archmage decides to tunnel into the earth or some other vauge hand wave of a back story). An encounter site dungeon seems to be one that is designed with a specific purpose and once the players have attained the goal, they "conquer" the encounter site. I'm sure I'm oversimplifying things here a bit. At any rate, I'd kind of like my new dungeon that I'm working on to contain elements of both. It is a site adventure that has an objective, but with an ecosystem that is self contained and regenerat...

So, what does a middle aged RPG obsessed man do for fun on a Friday night? Why complete a campaign world hex map. Well, at least part of one. So, here's the first stage of my campaign map. There will be some added embellishment, but overall, this is the basic structure. I don't think I'm in danger of winning any awards for my cartography, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. More importantly, it is helping tie together all the loose scraps of ideas I've had in the past four years or so since I started on this OSR project. Forward momentum on a project of my own (as opposed to the commissioned works)!!

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm working up a world map for my latest project. I've always been taken by those crazy old world maps with the sea monsters and skewed perspective. I know for some gamers, having a map that reflects actual terrain and distance is key. I can see that, but I actually enjoy the sense of wonder that these wonky maps engender. As I mentioned, the Might and Magic computer games really do a fantastic job at creating that sense of wonder. I for one would be interested in seeing more maps of that nature in gaming poducts.

So, as I've mentioned, I'm building momentum on my gaming projects. I think one of the hardest things for me is to scope out my projects effectively and then keep within that scope (Hrm, I'm wondering if I should take some project management courses). Anyway, I think I'm on to something that is pretty exciting for me at the moment. I'm going to modify the idea of the funerary island and create a self contained megadungeon adventure on the island. This will be part of my Shadows of the Umbra Palace adventure series and falls somewhere in the midlevel portion of the mega dungeon. I've finished mapping out the first level of a palace located on the island and two minor sublevels. I'll post those soon.

I've been working on some dungeon maps for my project and I finally feel like I'm going somewhere with this. I'm not exactly sure as to the end result. So far, judging by the first almost complete dungeon level, it looks like it will be fairly sizable. And it will also have around three levels and some sublevels. So, what do you think? Would a weird fantasy dungeon be interesting?

Here's another map I did several years ago ( I think it is from around 2005 or so). I'd been very inspired at the time by reading George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series and decided to try my hand at world building (You can tell that the map is somewhat vaguely similar to Westeros). I just felt like sharing as it is my first real attempt at some serious, full on world building. I think it gives a good basis to show where I started so that I can look back and see how things have progressed. Oh, and yeah, the world building idea is still kicking around in my head, but at the current point in time, it is outside the scope of my OSR projects.

Worked a bit on my next personal project. I'm trying to push myself into actually seeing through my OSRIC/OSR project that I had started way back in 2006! We'll see how it goes. Happily, I'm experiencing my Fall creative rush. However, I tend to have creative ADD so it is very hard for me to maintain focus and see things through unless I'm doing work for someone else. I tell you, having someone give you a deadline and a paycheck at the end of the deadline is a much better motivator. Perhaps I'll try and get my wife to be my taskmaster and try and keep my focus up.